Hisense Canvas TV review: High sense, low price

Outside of panel technologies—some of which boil down to personal preference—there’s not a lot separating similarly priced 4K TVs these days. Cue the entry of so-called “art TVs”. While there aren’t dozens of competing models, art TVs focus on providing quality playback alongside a high-quality wallpaper-like mode designed to replicate the look of classic artworks on canvas.

Hisense sent me the 55-inch Canvas TV to review, and I was pleasantly surprised with the appropriately priced results.

If you’re just craving a 55-inch tele, you can nab an entry-level option for under $1,000. Edge that 4K TV budget closer to $2,000, though, and you can expect more than just the bare bolts, with a taste of premium features. For art TVs specifically, there are three recent models.

In terms of 55-inch pricing, you’re looking at the TCL NXTFRAME for $1,395 RRP, the Hisense Canvas TV for $1,799, and Samsung’s The Frame for $1,995. While closer to Samsung’s pricing, the Canvas TV is appropriately priced next to other 55-inch standard (non-art) TV models from LG and Sony.

In its default form, the Hisense Canvas TV looks like any other 4K TV. You’ve got mounting options out of the box: wall or a couple of slimline (but surprisingly sturdy) legs. I was able to fully set it up alone with the legs. If you want to do the same, I’d advise using a doona to protect the screen while attaching the legs because they jut out a bit both ways, so you’ll want some sort of elevation. Otherwise, if you’re comfortable lifting 20kg, you can also get it on your TV stand solo, assuming you don’t have meddling cats (like I do).

I appreciate the comparatively generous length of the power cable and was surprised to find two remotes in the box. One of them is an average-looking TV remote that takes two AAA batteries (included in the box). And the other is a sleeker design with a USB-C charging port and a screen on the bottom that I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get going.

On the back of the tele are your set-and-forget ports. It’s a standard array: two USB (one 3.0, one 2.0), an Ethernet port and four HDMI ports. All four HDMI ports have variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto low latency mode (ALLM), but only ports three and four are HDMI 2.1 ports fit for modern consoles like the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 Pro. HDMI port three also supports enhanced audio return channel (eARC) for higher audio bandwidth if you have speakers or a soundbar that supports the tech.

All in, it was about half an hour to unbox and then go through the guided setup prompts. I was prompted to configure via Hisense’s VIDAA app, but that led to a chicken-and-egg problem whereby the app wouldn’t work without the TV being connected to my home network, so the app was functionally useless until I did those steps manually on the 4K TV with a remote.

I did some minor tinkering with the Hisense Canvas TV before diving into everyday testing. Sports Mode Auto Detection was disabled by default, so I switched it on. I also activated AI image upscaling and enabled the Enhanced (ACR) setting, which claims to use viewing data to enhance visual and audio quality. For most everyday viewing, I found the Cinema display preset to have the best balance for my eyes.

While I wouldn’t recommend anyone uses TV speakers, particularly in increasingly thinner teles, the Canvas TV has decent inbuilt audio. It’s not going to wow you with booming bass or the virtual three-dimensionality of a soundbar. Still, it does the job of providing decent audio (albeit flat) which, most importantly, has clear dialogue even at lower volumes.

In isolated viewing, I was impressed with the streaming image quality of the Canvas TV, across 4K, 1080p and lower-resolution content. Whatever you’re watching, expect a bright image that’s crisp and clear. When I shifted to side-by-side comparisons of identical videos on my 55-inch LG G3, some cracks started to appear. The Canvas TV tends to defer to overly bright colour representations for greens, yellows and reds.

In one comparison video, an orange item looked closer to red on the Hisense Canvas TV. There were also rare instances of visual artefacts in particularly bright skies, and the QLED display on the cheaper Hisense tele can’t compete with the OLED on the LG when it comes to detail in darker colours, including shadows. That said, I did appreciate the overall brightness boost on the Hisense display when it came to lower-light comparisons.

But to be fair, the LG G3 retailed for $4,195 in 2023, which is more than twice the price of the Hisense Canvas TV. Taking that into account, the Canvas TV is a very watchable tele.

I took the comparison images below on my Google Pixel 7 Pro, which should highlight some of the differences between the LG G3 and Hisense Canvas TV. The LG G3 is on the left, and the Hisense Canvas TV is on the right.

The big selling point of the Hisense Canvas TV is its art display. To complement that, the 4K TV comes with some easy-to-attach magnetic frames. They’re not essential, and the frames are added after the TV is mounted, but it’s a nice addition for those who really want to lean into the art motif. It took me about five minutes to set up.

Beyond the physical aesthetic, the Canvas TV defaults to an art mode when you power it on or off. A longer press of the power button bypasses this when shutting down, but that didn’t seem to work when powering on the TV via the remote. More confusing is how my LG TV remote seemed to turn the Hisense TV on or off (but not vice versa). By default, there’s a small rotation of classic artworks on the Canvas TV. If you sign up for a free VIDAA account and access the VIDAA Art App, that number reportedly goes to 1,000+.

It’s a nice feature for a 4.5 energy star-rated TV, which looks at its best with less detailed oil paintings. If you’re so inclined, you can also add your own pictures. The automation of this particular mode is generally appreciated but, compared to pricier 4K TVs, the VIDDA operating system isn’t quite up to snuff. It’s got a slight laggy feel to input and actuation, all atop a busy interface.

VIDAA OS supports the big-name streaming apps you’d expect, most of which are preinstalled, but there were others I couldn’t find in its app store, like Shudder, Twitch and a distinct lack of any VPN apps. Some of the other apps felt more filler than functional, including a couple of options that were in German. Then there’s VIDDA Free, which is a wrapper for existing services, so you still have to log in to some of those for playback functionality to streamers like ABC iView.

Outside of watching movies, TV shows and sports, most of my time with the Canvas TV was spent playing games. The maxed-out PC version of Assassin’s Creed Shadows looked particularly great, and the brighter panel made it a bit easier to spot enemies during night missions. While I do mostly like the reflection-limiting matte display, it doesn’t eliminate light as much as it diffuses it in a way that impacts the brightness on those light-touched parts of the screen. It’s better than seeing a full bulb reflected in my LG G3 screen in darker scenes, but given it’s already an (arguably) overly bright screen, the matte isn’t helping the Canvas TV in terms of on-screen contrast. You can see this towards the top of any of the Canvas TV photos on this page towards the top of the screen (most notable when content has black bars).

The Hisense Canvas TV is competitively priced for what you get. Its brighter display isn’t perfect, but it is a better fit for daytime viewing and playback in well-lit spaces. Short of side-by-side comparisons against pricier OLED models, most users should be very happy with the on-screen results, and the halfway decent speakers are a nice addition. If it had the Android TV operating system, it would be even closer to being a wholly recommendable 4K TV with its already decent versatility.